It’s a DPS loss compared to the other talent choice but if you have it then using it is a gain compared to doing nothing.
There are things you can do while pooling energy but most of them aren’t directly related to damage. If you’re doing the Wildpower Surge build, then you’re doing more than just a Mangle in Bear. You’re probably adding on a Thrash and then Ironfur so that when you shift back to cat you have a ton of armor. Not something you’ll be doing constantly, but there’s a lot of mechanics that will make less lethal.
Otherwise, I find it’s a good time to throw out some healing. Hard-cast Regrowths if you have nothing else, but when I run Wildstalker I like to do a Wild Growth since that’s buffed by talents like Lore of the Grove anyway and it procs more Wildstalker blooms. It’s certainly not a ton of healing but hey, it’s free so long as you can squeeze in the APM for it. Makes a lot of use of all those dead talents we’re forced to take.
Man the only thing that feels really bad for me is the lack of range we used to have. It helped with up time and defensively because we could tow that line of staying out of stuff more and continuing dps. Feral is pretty squishy and having that range, I felt, was a game changer.
I don’t mind the playstyle of the spec (for druid of claw at least) however their output seems inadequate compared to how it was originally @ the start of the expansion
So yeah, I feel feral was great until they hotfixed / nerfed their damage.
Now it feels … Idk, less than mediocre?
Which is a shame, since they’re almost always the novelty meatbag spec of the class and rarely ever taken seriously
A flickering moment of spotlight is all feral will get, before they’re ultimately kicked down & pummelled back into the slums of D tier and laughed at by Blizzard.
I don’t feel there was any nerf. However, I agree that DotC seems inadequate, despite all the guides saying it is competitive (especially because of it’s survivability, which is marginally better with FR in cat), I find it significantly below wildstalker on all my parses (like 200k dps lower).
I feel like sims aren’t taking into account the flow of the spec. For instance, there are times Ravage will proc at no energy and 1CP at a time when I’m going need to reapply a snapshotted rip. By the time I reach the end of the second cycle, the Ravage buff will have fallen off. I wonder if sims count that Ravage damage even though there was no opportunity to use it in practice.
They really should just have the ravage buff act as a PERMANENT buff – Lasting until either used, willingly dispelled or switched spec.
or at the very least make it ‘permanent’ whilst in combat then slowly tick away after leaving combat …
Because like you said there’s times where it doesn’t flow well into the spec or you need to swing into the second cycle. Sure there’s times you get lucky, but there’s far too many times where it’s wasted and it doesn’t feel great
Yeah those are some of my biggest irks too.
They were VERY noticeable upon returning to feral druid
No. I mean yes, it would feel good, but then it goes against the whole design philosophy of choosing what to prioritise and when. Do you extend a Rip inside a TF window or do you fire off the Ravage for some upfront AoE and then work on getting your Rip reapplied the next round.
I never made the claim of wanting druids to have unlimited energy.
I said the idea of making it a permanent buff (which i’m not actually against) isn’t going to happen because that’s not the playstyle they want for Druid. They want you to prioritize your abilities.
If we:
Then we’re not going to fall into the issue of:
But that’s the thing. Snapshot Rip in BT > Ravage in ST.
I wasn’t stating that’s what you said, I’m stating that the making of ‘Ravage’ a permanent buff until used or dispelled — Isn’t going to remove the idea of feral druids prioritising their abilities.
My ultimate point was that regardless of whatever they do with / towards the ravage-use timer, feral druid abilities are still going to be prioritised due to their limit of energy and consumption of combo points & other procs.
But it would because now there’s no pressure of having to make a decision. Again, against the entire philosophy of the current Feral play style.
And as such, they can leave it alone as it emphasizes the point even more.
Yes it sucks, no i’m not against the idea of it being held until used, but I just don’t see it happening simply because it’s not how they’re trying to design the spec.
The old style of Predator really doesn’t work for snapshotting. There needs to be weight behind our energy and CD usage for the mechanic to be more than an afterthought, and being able to refresh TF frequently takes away a lot of that weight.
Yeah I suggested this earlier in this thread or another thread. I have no idea why there is a duration on Ravage; it should really stay up until we either use it or drop combat, at least in PVE.
Correct, which is why it’s correct to rip. The question is will the sim be smart enough to calculate the time it takes to get back around the second cycle and whether Ravage is still up. If not, that would inflate our damage in the sim.
Maybe. Snapshotting shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of our dps though. Should it be a thing? Absolutely. Should it be the only way to approach every situation? Absolutely not.
but it wouldnt. my priority is still dot upkeep but now i dont have the bad feeling of watching a ravage get wasted because i could afford to waste energy and combo points on it. it would just sit there until im able to bite. its just the bite would be ravage. it doesnt go against the philosophy all it does is not waste ravage procs. as it stands 3/4 of my ravage procs might as well not have happen as they dont get used. what good is a hard hitting ability on a proc chance if the majority of the time im unable to use it.
It’s not against the entire philosophy of the current feral playstyle, because only the ‘Druid of the Claw’ hero talents have Ravage; it’s not a base provided ability without selecting the appropriate talents …
Additionally with that being said, stating that “There’s no pressure of having to make a decision” — is extremely dismissive to the pressures of decision towards the struggle of both energy & combo-point consumption.
You still have to weigh what you want to cast and weave with the rotation in accordance to your energy usage, bleeds, combo point applications + spendings and whatever empowerment cooldowns at your disposal The only difference is that you won’t be punished for the hero-talent passive empowerment fading away alongside those.
If there’s a way to make it work as a mechanic while simultaneously allowing alternate options, then I’d be open to discussing what that looks like. But I don’t really know how it would be possible to have both without having our entire spec tree littered with choice nodes between energy and bleed output, which seems really dull to me.
But even if there is a way, I don’t know that it would be good overall to allow any spec to opt out of its core mechanic. Should fire mage be able to opt out of combustion? Should BM hunter be able to opt out of pet damage? Should disc priest be able to opt out of atonement?
There are a couple examples of specs that have multiple distinct ways to play where a core mechanic is set aside in one of the play styles. In those cases the spec has multiple core mechanics at play and the structure is enhancing one while suppressing the other. Perhaps if feral was given another core mechanic that could be a push and pull between this might work. But in the cases where a spec has a singular core mechanic underlying its performance, I simply cannot imagine the spec being able to opt out of that mechanic while remaining competitive with those that leverage the mechanic.
Actually I think it fits even better than you are talking about here. There would still be wasted Ravage procs whenever Ravage procs a second time before we popped the first. We just wouldn’t have to watch the Ravage duration tick to zero due to rip being higher priority in the moment.
And even if it is too good (per whatever Blizzard’s definition of too good is), the numbers could be rebalanced to account for the additional uses. Right now it just feels bad to watch a Ravage proc taunt me as it disappears into the void while I’m pooling.
Then use Ravage if it makes you feel bad to watch it go to waste.
You can use it every time it pops up. You’re having to make that choice though. Thus, their philosophy on how they want Feral to play out. You’re proving my point.
And it still applies with Wildstalker too. Having to decide between using a Bite vs reapplying DoTs. It actually leans in even harder since maintaining your DoTs is where your benefit of Wildstalker comes in to play.
But it’s already been decided and ingrained that snapshot dots > ravage. So there is no pressure. The struggle of energy and combo point consumption doesnt really matter as maintaining Rip is the priority. So, no, it’s not dismissive. It’s just how the playstyle is.
And we’ve already covered what we’re going to be using and when, ad nauseum. Repeating this isn’t going to change that.
So yeah, I feel feral was great until they hotfixed / nerfed their damage.
You’ll still priorise that though, around the energy consumption & combo-points usage.
